


there goes the last great american dynasty

by petalbridges



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 1800s san francisco bay area, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Bittersweet Ending, F/F, Lil angsty, M/M, Offscreen character death, first person POV, i did too much research on the california gold rush, it is a plot point but i cant decide if its major i tagged to be safe, kind of a gatsbyesque au, kunimi going to berkeley to just play fb and gossip is incredibly funny thats why i did it, last great american dynasty with some no body no crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28584483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalbridges/pseuds/petalbridges
Summary: The year was 1873. She was Kageyama Miwa, the second generation of a gold rush fortune, recently moved to the coast to get out of the Central Valley. She was the heir to the family name, allowed to do what she wished if only for her influence, and the city moved at her whims, Pacific Ocean parting to her fingers.Iwaizumi Hajime was a barely middle-class nobody, the son of a small-time ghost town’s shopkeep and the product of a messy divorce. He settled in a tiny house near the Oakland Pier, where the ferry would carry passengers across the shallow waters to and from San Francisco.They were married soon as the ocean turned royal blue against the yellow summer sky, the dour winter fog no longer marring the beautiful coastline of Northern California.(who knows if he never showed up, what could've been?)
Relationships: Haiba Alisa/Kageyama Miwa, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 21
Kudos: 30





	there goes the last great american dynasty

**Author's Note:**

> okay so technically this isn't Great Gatsby AU but it's still technically [Amber's](https://twitter.com/spikyiwaizumi) fault because she tweeted about it which made me think about it again and then i made a playlist and put last great american dynasty on it and then started thinking about the gold rush again (as one does) and then this happened. songfics are good cringe is dead  
> i don't think you actually have to know anything about the gold rush or sf bay, i just like writing very specific fics about things i have a lot of knowledge on
> 
> other cws: (spoilers ahead)
> 
> -false accusations of infidelity  
> -false accusations of murder

In 1886 I moved to Berkeley, to attend the University of California and study at my father’s insistence. I really had no interest in maths and sciences, but the opportunity for higher education was a luxury that I accepted graciously, finding that, at the very least, the football team was agreeable. 

I hated the Northern California weather in June. Constantly cold, foggy, rainy. Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, and for good reason. 

Once, I was caught unawares in a rainstorm on the corner of Telegraph Avenue. Quite a ways from home, and foolishly without an umbrella, I hunkered into my jacket and hoped that the storm would pass quickly. Instead, I felt a presence at my shoulder, and turned to see a man looking at me kindly. He was taller than I, his hair greying around his temples and eyes crinkled with age and smile lines. 

He offered me an umbrella, simply saying, “Just embrace the rain,” before walking off. I stood a little straighter, my hunched shoulders loosening under the protection of the umbrella, most definitely making a face in the direction of the stranger’s departure. 

Two women, standing a ways away to my other side, had watched this encounter. One _tsk-_ ed in my direction, the other narrowed her eyes in pity. 

“What?” I asked, wondering what I had done. 

“I would stay away from him,” one had warned, rather cryptically. We watched his back disappear into the heavy fog that blanketed us.

And they said, pityingly, one gesturing with her chin, “There goes the last great American dynasty. Who knows, if he never showed up, what could’ve been?”

My head turned back to see the other scoff. “There goes the most shameless man that this town has ever seen.” 

“He had a _marvelous_ time ruining everything.” 

I never heard again of the man until my trip to the City, where I was greeted by the Victorian row houses and the natural beauty of the peninsula. 

The Mariposa House sat in what would later be the San Francisco Hills, overlooking the Bay and the Sierra Nevadas in one direction and the Pacific in the other. I only asked about it once, and pieced together the bits of story I had heard over the next few years. 

The year was 1873. She was Kageyama Miwa, the second generation of a gold rush fortune, recently moved to the coast to get out of the Central Valley. She was the heir to the family name, allowed to do what she wished if only for her influence, and the city moved at her whims, Pacific Ocean parting to her fingers. 

He was a barely middle-class nobody, the son of a small-time ghost town’s shopkeep and the product of a messy divorce. Iwaizumi Hajime had booked a seat on the brand new railroad that crossed the mountains separating Sacramento from the Bay. He settled in a tiny house near the Oakland Pier, where the ferry would carry passengers across the shallow waters to and from San Francisco. He caught her eye there, soon much of her days spent in the East Bay rather than the City. 

They were married soon as the ocean turned royal blue against the yellow summer sky, the dour winter fog no longer marring the beautiful coastline of Northern California. The wedding was charming, from what I hear, if not a little gauche, but such are things when the bride comes from new money and her father and grandfather sought to solidify their station by impression. 

Perhaps the wedding was rushed, but the denizens of the Bay paid it no mind - they were both barely in their twenties, and young love was such a beautiful thing. Was it not? Even if the young man had certainly wed above his station, and was a little unpolished at that, now he would certainly be forced to settle down, carry on the name. 

Her grandfather built the Mariposa House for them, named for the iconic ranch of the long-gone golden era. As much as it was a gesture of goodwill, it was also to cement the Kageyamas’ place in the Bay - and that it did, its grandeur rising over the burgeoning city with grace. It caught my eye, after all.

The story could’ve ended here, and I assumed it did. It was picturesque, new money in the new city, and a beautiful family serving as its aristocrats. My assumption was wrong. 

I was told stories of extravagant, yet tasteful parties hosted by the new couple, the Mariposa House’s doors open. The gatherings were always on the edge of wild, and a little loud, both the pool and the champagne overflowing. Kageyama was a lovely host, the lady of the estate, welcoming guests with a practiced smile and a gentle hand. Iwaizumi, dressed in his finest, was always first to toast his wife’s success and longevity. 

The rumors started not a year after their marriage. The parties attracted all sorts, of course, men of all temperaments and women of all kinds of principles. Iwaizumi, after his toasts, often disappeared to the gardens and stared across the Bay, the nighttime silhouettes of the Sierra Nevadas cut only by the blinking lights of Oakland’s ports. Guests wondered what he was looking for - the peace of his old life in the East Bay, maybe, the little house on the marina. 

_But who would ever give up that kind of lavish life?_ was the unspoken question on everyone’s mouths, the enigma of Iwaizumi’s pining unknown to anyone but him. 

They saw Alisa Haiba before they recognized her, daughter of Russian and Japanese immigrant parents and the local belle, rivaled only by Kageyama Miwa herself. They were of similar age, but different in every way but their upbringing. Miwa was a soft-spoken young woman with lovely rounded features, tall but not imposing, careful but not ingenuine. Alisa was a porcelain doll come to life, recklessly unaware of the fragility of a young woman, all sharp angles and fine points. When she became a regular invitee of the gatherings at the Mariposa House, it was assumed she was a guest of Miwa, the two often seen together. Then they saw the dainty new necklace that laid gently between her collarbones, the kind of thing that would be presented to a lover. Hushed whispers passed between the townsfolk of all social standings. 

_Certainly not_ , they said, disbelief coloring their features. _Certainly, Iwaizumi Hajime would not keep a mistress._ And the closest friend of his wife, at that. 

How horrid, I would say at this point in the story’s telling, without meaning it. It seemed to me all speculation and embellishment, a crime too great to be committed; though I did not doubt the ability of men to do horrendous things, I doubted the ability of the man I had met that day to cause such scandal. 

The appearance of Alisa’s husband only confounded the rumors - he was tall and effortlessly beautiful, red-brown hair falling to frame his charming face. Iwaizumi had a roguish handsomeness to him, no one would deny that, but by the way Oikawa Tooru, “minor nobility” of the East Bay, ever so gently led his wife by the arm and kissed her cheek as she departed him, the whispers of infidelity were hard to believe. 

Until.

In the summer of 1876, between Mariposa House’s celebrations of the Summer Solstice and Autumn Harvest Festival, Iwaizumi Hajime reported the death of his beloved wife. 

She was found and pronounced dead at the scene, proclaimed to have died in her sleep of a heart attack. Iwaizumi - to the public, at least - was inconsolable. Only Alisa’s grief was more potent than his. 

Foul play was not initially suspected. A mere month after Miwa’s passing, Alisa moved into the Mariposa House, and the local gossip had a field day. 

_She sleeps in the Lady’s bed and everything, I hear, her husband moved back to Oakland. Terrible, all of it._

The accusation of murder hung heavy over the Bay, Iwaizumi’s reputation irreparably tarnished despite Oikawa’s insistence that he had been with him the night of the event. No evidence was found, no charges filed. The outrage died down to boiling anger, and then narrowed glances, hushed whispers, quiet warnings, like the one I had received that day on Telegraph Ave. The Mariposa house was left solely to Alisa Haiba’s care. Iwaizumi and Oikawa both disappeared to the Berkeley Hills. 

But the story didn’t end there, either. 

They say Alisa was seen on occasion, covered in the dim of midnight, pacing the rocks of the northern beaches, staring out at the dark ocean. Fifteen years is a long time; and Mariposa House sat quietly on that beach for that long, occupied only by one heartbroken woman who never saw the sun. 

I bought it in the Spring of 1892. 

Who knows if I never showed up, what could’ve been? 

I sat and ate dinner with the last great American dynasty in the grand room of the Mariposa House. If I had been blown away by the beauty of its exterior, I was not ready to see the intricacies of its interior, Victorian decorations and an air of regality I would likely never see again in my lifetime. Alisa Haiba, now nearing her forties, invited me in heartily, her smile warm and genuine. Iwaizumi Hajime and Oikawa Tooru arrived together a little after I did, arm in arm, and sat together at the table. 

Conversation was light, dinner delightful, but I could sense they knew I had questions, and Iwaizumi waited patiently for me to summon the courage to ask them. 

“Did you love Kageyama Miwa?” I asked, hoping the question would not make him uncomfortable, but instead, he looked as if he expected it. 

He folded his napkin neatly in his lap, looking at the table with a small smile. “I did,” he started, “Dearly. But not in the way that you think.” 

And so I learned what had really happened in the San Francisco Bay, twenty years ago. 

Kageyama Miwa was heiress to her name, pressured to settle down from the carefree lifestyle of her late teens by her father. Instead, she moved to the Bay to delay the inevitable - a loveless marriage, a family of her own. 

She met Iwaizumi Hajime on the Oakland Long Pier, by chance. They laughed as they recounted the story, Miwa cornered in the alleyway, Hajime chasing off the man with a stern look and a few harsh words. She invited him to dinner as thanks, and he begrudgingly accepted, on account that it was not a date. 

Miwa had hoped as much, but was confused by the sentiment. Over common fish and chips on the pier, they both learned that they were the same - seeking freedom from the restraints of a typical marriage, knowing it would never lead to a true love for them. They became quick friends after that, Miwa taking the ferry to visit him in the East Bay, and soon, he offered her a present better than any engagement ring - the promise to marry, and allow her to choose the life she wished to live. She accepted wholeheartedly, with the assurance that the gift was mutual. 

Like Iwaizumi had told me, they were not in love. But they did love each other. They did care wholeheartedly for the other, vows to protect in sickness and health genuine. 

Their missing pieces were found in the next year, Alisa Haiba walking into the Mariposa House on the arm of Hajime’s childhood best friend. And they both, finally able to accept themselves and their feelings, allowed themselves to love. 

Alisa still visits the Mariposa House, sometimes. She runs her fingertips along the ancient wallpaper, sits with me for tea and tells stories of her and Miwa’s young love. I ask her if she wishes she was not the madwoman of the City, now, and she tells me, genuinely, 

“Kunimi-san, I would do it all over and more if it meant I saw Miwa again.” 

Occasionally, I’ll take the ferry to Oakland and meet Tooru and Hajime on the pier. I watch them tease each other with easy smiles, Hajime complaining how long it took Tooru to find him again before whispering that he was worth the wait. He thinks I can’t hear him, but I do. They live in a gorgeous little house in the Berkeley Hills, with a view of the Bay spread out before them and the trees to shade their porch. I visited once, looked out to the dark ocean, past the blinking light that led Tooru to Hajime and the beaches where Alisa still looks for Miwa, and I wonder how much love must heal, to withstand the unkindness of those who did not know the whole story. 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i live in the bay how did you know
> 
> thank you everyone who enabled this, which i think includes amber, moni, ghosty, the iwaoi discord, and 8 ppl who voted in the poll i made on twitter. [here's my twitter.](https://twitter.com/petalbridges)
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
